Deeplinks Blog posts about Privacy

Back in December of 2010, Facebook debuted its tag suggestion feature, which works by using facial recognition technology to examine photos in which you’ve already been tagged, and then creating what Facebook calls your “photo summary” or “photo comparison information,” or what we’ll call your “facial fingerprint.” Using this information, FB suggests your name to your friends when they upload a photo of you, and invites them to tag you in that photo.

EFF recently joined several legal defense organizations, law professors and others to urge the Ohio Supreme Court to rule that warrantless surveillance of a car with a GPS tracking device violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

In State v. Johnson, the police planted a GPS tracking device on a van without a search warrant. They proceeded to monitor the van for days, ultimately tracking its movement from Cincinnati to Chicago. The Court of Appeals found that the police didn't violate the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure because the tracking didn't constitute a "search."

A week ago today, EFF launched the Tor Challenge – calling on people and organizations to help Internet activists across the globe by operating Tor relays. Today, we’re adding a new incentive to encourage additional Tor relays.

Tor is a service that masks your IP address. Activists, bloggers, and humanitarian aid workers around the world depend on Tor to maintain their anonymity online and access websites that have been blocked by their governments. The Tor Project has an acute need for volunteers to run relays, which individuals can set up on their computers or on virtual machines.

Every relay makes a difference to Tor in terms of speed and security. As the arms race between circumvention tools and censors speeds up, we need hundreds more to make sure that every blocked relay is quickly replaced.
– Karen Reilly, the Tor Project

On June 3, EFF will begin live coverage of a critical discussion about online freedom of expression held by the 47 member states of the U.N Human Rights Council during its seventeenth session in Geneva. The meeting will include the introduction of a landmark report to the Council by United Nations Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue that advocates safeguards to protect free expression online including privacy and anonymity.

EFF recently launched a campaign calling on companies to stand with their users when the government comes looking for data. (If you haven’t done so, sign our petition urging companies to provide better transparency and privacy.) This article will provide a more detailed look at one of the four categories in which a company can earn a gold star in our campaign: fighting for users' privacy rights in court.